Risk management will take a certain interest in initiatives
that can lower healthcare costs, reduce accidents, and improve safety, and may be able to contribute some funding
to projects fitting those descriptions.

3) Target Your Efforts

Revisit the employee data you incorporated into your
business case in #1. Which problem is costing your
organization the most money? The answer may surprise
you. A three-year study of healthcare spending at seven
corporations with a total of 92,000 employees revealed
that obesity is the highest-cost risk factor per capita – not
surprising, as it affects so many people. However, depression carries the highest treatment cost per person. (See
“The Real Cost of Unhealthy Workplaces” at right.)

“When you’re looking at your own company, what reallymatters is how prevalent your main problems are,” Listersays. “If depression happens to be the biggest issue in yourcompany, then that’s the thing you have to treat. Multiplyprevalence by cost to determine what each problem iscosting you in sick days, healthcare, and other resources.”Chronic stress is another major contributor to presen-teeism and can also play a role in physical health com-plaints. A healthy building must tackle workplace-relatedstress alongside other risk factors.

“Several German companies have started to self-regulate
by refusing to push emails through to employees after 5
p.m. and on weekends,” says Sargent. “They shut the servers down to give people a mental break so they can regenerate instead of being constantly stressed. The question in
this country is ‘If you want to be paid on the weekend for
reading a work-related email, should I dock you for when
you’re on Facebook in the middle of the day?’ Where do you
draw the line? Because of our ability to access technology
and be reachable 24/7, the boundaries are blurred almost to
the point where there are none, leading people to feel like
they're on call constantly and making it hard for most to
feel like they're in control.”

4) Start Simple

Lister, Schmidt, and Sargent recommend attacking one of
these five risk factors for chronic disease first, as initiatives to
combat them tend to be the least expensive for employers:
■ Obesity
■ Physical inactivity
■ Stress
■ Poor food choices
■ Tobacco use
Some entry-level initiatives can combat multiple
problems at once. For example, a workplace that encourages movement and offers a variety of spaces for different
work styles can simultaneously attack obesity, inactivity,

SEVERAL WALKING TRAILS of varying length help ACT
employees stay fit.

AN INTERNAL PATH inside ACT’s Davidsen Building provides
a quarter-mile jaunt for days when the weather isn’t good
enough to be active outside.